White House Issues Directive on U.S.

Message from the Editor

Welcome to GISWeekly! This week our industry news takes a look at the White House Commercial Remote Sensing Space Policy. Also, some highlights to look forward to at the upcoming GeoSpatial World Conference held in New Orleans, May 19-21. Next week I will be at GeoSpatial World and hope to see many of you there.

GISWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Alliances/Acquisitions, Announcements, Awards, Appointments, New Products, Featured Downloads, Around the Web, and Calendar.

GISWeekly welcomes letters and feedback from readers, so let us know what you think. Send your comments to me at Email Contact

Best wishes,
Susan Smith, Managing Editor

Industry News

White House Issues Directive on U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing

Space Imaging's Public Relations Manager Gary Napier spoke with GISWeekly about the President's newly released White House policy titled U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Space Policy. The Bush Administration's new directive, under interagency review for a year, was announced by the White House on May 13, 2003. The directive strengthens the government's long-term objective to commit to and establish domestic high-resolution satellite imagery companies as world industry leaders and states that it is in the national security interest to have a strong and competitive commercial remote sensing industry anchored on U.S. shores.

“It's a commitment from the highest level of government to back our industry,” said Napier. “Not many industries get this sort of commitment from the U.S. Government at this level.”

In a keynote address at a U.S. Government-sponsored conference on commercial remote sensing in Washington, D.C., Secretary of Commerce Don Evans said, "The remote sensing industry is poised for great market penetration. At our department, we recognize the promise of the remote sensing industry." During Operation Iraqi Freedom the industry "provided timely and accurate information," said Secretary Evans.

According to the new policy, the commercial or the civil side of federal government must, within 120 days of this policy's inception, come up with “implementation of this directive will be within the overall policy and resource guidance of the President subject to the availability of appropriations, of course. Agencies have been directed to complete a series of specific actions in 120 days from the date of this directive.” The targeted agencies are: military, intelligence, foreign policy, homeland security and civil. The Department of State (foreign policy), Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, Department of Interior and Department of Defense will be involved. They will all come up with an implementation proposal demonstrating how they're going to increase their use of remote sensing imagery and data.

"This is a forward-looking policy that confirms the government's long-term commitment to the high-resolution commercial satellite industry," said Robert Dalal, CEO of Space Imaging. This new directive replaces Presidential Decision Directive 23 signed by President Clinton in March 1994 and supports the U.S. in maintaining a competitive commercial high-resolution satellite business in the worldwide market. Within the same year of that signing, Lockheed Martin spun out Space Imaging as a company and got other investors such as Raytheon and Mitsubishi to come on board.

The policy states: “The fundamental goal of this policy is to advance and protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by maintaining the nation's leadership in remote sensing activities and by sustaining and enhancing the U.S. remote sensing industry."

By investing in the U.S. commercial remote sensing industry the government will make sure the U.S. maintains its position as the world's technology leader. Ultimately the U.S. government will lead by having its own U.S. based industry and continue to be a technology leader. “The U.S. has always been the leader in remote sensing - 40 years ago our parent company Lockheed Martin build satellites called the Coronas,” said Napier. “The U.S. flew the first spy satellites, and Lockheed built an entire legacy of these satellites.” Secondly the U.S. government sees the value in commercial imagery. “Instead of building more intelligence satellites in the military arena and getting over capacity, the government can depend on commercial companies for additional capacity and they can increase their geospatial products substantially by using commercial imagery,” said Napier.

Now Space Imaging is teaming up with key investors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as subcontractors so they can bid on Next View, NIMA's contract to invest in and assure the availability of high resolution from next generation U.S. commercial imaging satellites.

DigitalGlobe(TM) also responded to the news with excitement and applauded President Bush for announcing the directive. Herbert Satterlee, CEO and chairman of DigitalGlobe said, "By issuing this directive, the Bush Administration pushes the technology envelope by encouraging all agencies to look to private remote sensing companies for their imaging requirements. DigitalGlobe is very excited about the directive and we believe this will further solidify the commercial satellite imaging industry."

The policy is a positive step for commercial remote sensing providers, and if funding is made available, the industry could become very profitable in years to come.

White House News Release

Space Policy Fact Sheet

NIMA Press Briefing Announcement

NIMA News Release

May 13, 2003
New York Times, " U.S. to Rely More on Private Companies' Satellite Images," Eric Lichtblau; President Bush is ordering federal agencies to rely much more heavily on private satellite companies to provide images from space (article)

May 13, 2003
USA Today, " Limits on Commercial Spy Satellites to Ease," Dan Vergano; story on new White House Commercial Remote Sensing Policy (article)

--> May 12, 2003
United Press International, " New Policy Will Help Space Photo Companies," Frank Sietzen, UPI Science News; a new space policy that makes commercial high-resolution space photography the primary source for government users, supplanting space photos taken by government satellites (article)

GeoSpatial World Preview

GeoSpatial World 2003, Intergraph's International Training and Management Conference for the GeoSpatial Users Community, will be held at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, May 19-21, in the heart of downtown and close to the French Quarter. All keynote addresses, general and technical sessions will be held in the Hyatt.

Notable about Intergraph is that the company has in the past year made some significant changes to expand the organization to fill out the industry sector, “Intergraph Mapping and GeoSpatial Solutions.” Under this umbrella are geospatial resource management, land information management, geospatial intelligence, geospatial data management and cartography, commercial remote sensing and photogrammetry solutions. The acquisition of Z/I Imaging and new Utilities and Communications solutions round out the suite of solutions.

Keynotes will be presented by Preetha Pulusani, President of Intergraph Mapping and GeoSpatial Solutions, Terence Keating, Executive Vice President Intergraph Mapping and GeoSpatial Solutions, and Arthur L. Spencer, Jr. Executive Vice President Intergraph Utilities and Communications, and a representative from NIMA.

Technical sessions will be offered in the following categories: education, foundations, applications development, local/regional government solutions, military and intelligence solutions, national government solutions, transportation industry solutions, utilities and communications solutions. Developers' courses will also be offered on GeoMedia Customization.

Other highlights:

* A Friendly Man Machine to Aid the Visualization of GPS-Guided Trajectories of a Semi-autonomous Tractor-detailing a project for making it safe to spray citrus and olive fields by using semi-autonomous navigation tractors.

*Making Your Way Through Live Events (Wired and Wireless Event Information Portal) -a presentation describing the concept of a prototyping initiative between Intergraph Germany and the Austrian Research Studio iSpace to set up an information portal for major events.

*Jefferson Parish Site Tour - The GIS department at Jefferson Parish uses GeoMedia Professional and GeoMedia WebMap for their internal and external communications. You will see GeoMedia Professional integrating data from disparate departments on this tour.

*Mardi Gras World on Tuesday will be a gala event complete with lavish floats that are used in the Mardi Gras parades. Conferences attendees will be bussed to the event.

Alliances/Acquisitions

NavCom Technology, Inc. entered into a strategic alliance with solutions provider and systems integrator Bridge Technology, Inc. Through this alliance NavCom's award winning Safari Network(tm) SR-7100, will join the array of communications solutions offered by Bridge Technology to its transportation clients.

Announcements

AirIQ Inc. (TSX: IQ) reports significantly reduced net cash usage to $282,835, revenue increased by 69.2% year over year and 12.9% over the previous quarter, and gross margin improved by 170.9% year over year and 5.1% over the previous quarter, for the quarter ended March 31, 2003.

Data from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, along with information from other satellites, allows researchers to see how much rain is falling over most of the world every three hours. This capability enables scientists to daily map areas of potential flooding.

These maps, available to the public on the Internet, will help water resource managers and scientists around the world by providing near-real time data of rainfall and flood potential. TRMM is considered a unique "rain gauge in the sky," because its instruments can look into clouds to determine rainfall, while other satellites can only see flooded areas after floods have occurred.

The GITA Pacific Northwest conference will be held this year at The Westin Salishan Lodge and Golf Resort, Gleneden Beach (south of Lincoln City), OR, on October 20 - 21, 2003. You can monitor progress of the conference planning by logging onto the above website.

The Preliminary Program is now available for the 2nd Annual URISA Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) Conference. The event will be held from July 20-22, 2003 at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

Communities from all levels of government, on both sides of the U.S./Canada border, came together to explore incident response and emergency situations in a demonstration organized as part of the Open GIS Consortium's Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative (CIPI). In addition to developing a reference approach to uniting communities at different levels of government to share data, the demonstration highlighted new specifications involving emergency notification systems and illustrated a vision of data sharing for the future. The sponsors of this phase of the initiative include GeoConnections, led by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and General Dynamics - Advanced Information Systems.

Tim Berners-Lee and former Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer will provide the keynote addresses at this year's Emerging Technology Summit, sponsored by the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) and the Open GIS Consortium (OGC). The interactive 1.5-day summit will be held June 5 and 6 at the Sheraton Premiere at Tyson's Corner, in Vienna, Virginia.

Safe Software Inc. announced it has added Open GIS Consortium Web Feature Services (OGC WFS) Client support to its entire product line, including its flagship data transformation product FME (Feature Manipulation Engine).

UCLID Software announced that it is seeking beta test sites for Swipe It! version 2.0 which will work with the ESRI ArcGIS Traverse Window. Swipe It! version 1.0, released in March, uses a cut and paste technique to move data from scanned documents to the ESRI ArcGIS Attribute Window. Swipe It! is a GIS data entry tool that eliminates the need for typing. Anyone wishing to apply for the beta program can do so online at http://beta.uclid.com

. Analytical Surveys, Inc. announced that the company is in settlement discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the restatement of the company's financial results in fiscal 1999.

The Homeland Security Summit and Expo 2003 takes place May 14-16 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.

Awards

ERDAS IMAGINE software received the highest overall rating among 40 tools evaluated by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Pathfinder program during the Functional Crosswalk phase of Pathfinder 2003 Geospatial Intelligence Tools for the Distributed Common Ground System (GIT/DCGS) assessment. The software also received ratings in the highest range for every functional subcategory evaluated during the Technical Crosswalk phase. In fact, of the 17 competing vendor solutions, ERDAS IMAGINE was one of only four solutions to earn across-the-board “Favorable” ratings for technical performance.

Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions announced a GeoMedia(R) software grant to be awarded to the Geomatics Institute at Fleming, a newly established academic wing devoted in part to geographic information systems (GIS), cartography, remote sensing and surveying at Fleming College in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. The grant, valued at more than $1.4 million (Canadian), includes licenses of GeoMedia Professional and GeoMedia WebMap Professional as well as training, support and maintenance. The software will primarily be used by students and professors for demonstrations and projects in the college's Cartographic Specialist Program, with future implementation in additional curriculums.

In collaboration with AGILE, Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions also awarded the University of Zaragoza, Spain with the inaugural GeoMedia(R) Research Grant for AGILE members, during the recent Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe's (AGILE) sixth annual Conference. The grant will enable the university, an Intergraph Team GeoMedia Registered Research Laboratory, to develop a Web-based national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) for Spain that includes GeoMedia technology.

Appointments

Lizardtech Software appointed Karen Morley as Vice President, Geospatial Imaging. Morley will lead the product and market strategy for Lizardtech's geospatial imaging solutions, including software products GeoExpress with MrSID(r) and Lizardtech Express Server.

François Blanc was appointed to the position of Director of Marketing of KHEOPS Technologies in Montreal. Mr. Blanc will also head the new KHEOPS office in Toronto. François Blanc has twelve years of experience in product development and product line management in the software industry. He held managerial positions at IBM, ILOG Inc., and Nortel Networks. He joins KHEOPS from Banff Technologies, a consultancy he founded in 2001.

New Products

Telcontar announced the release of Drill Down Server™ Version 3.0. DDS 3.0 now provides enhanced capabilities for fleet tracking, trip planning, navigation, real- time traffic information, emergency roadside assistance and concierge services.

NovaLIS Technologies, provider of integrated land records management solutions released Parcel Editor 8 for ESRI's ArcMap 8.3 platform.

Europa Technologies announces immediate shipping of its digital world map Global Insight, version 3.1. The new release includes a number of updates and enhancements that extend across the global product family: Global Discovery, Global Insight Plus and Global Insight. blue 8, UK supplier of location technology to public services, has launched blue 8 xi, an Internet-based data publication and collection tool that delivers professional map manipulation and interrogation capabilities to users via standard web browsers.

Hollywood film studios could soon be using Earth Resource Mapping's open standard Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) technology as commonly as geospatial professionals. In a world first for the animation industry, Terratracer's Terrashader(R) terrain rendering plug-in uses ECW files, rather than jpeg files, as an image source.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced its AMD Athlon(TM) MP processor 2800+, designed for one- and two-way servers and workstations running demanding 32-bit applications for enterprises.

LocatioNet announced the release of LocatioNet MyMap at Mobile Location Services Congress in Amsterdam. An integrated suite of graphical location-based service (LBS) application modules, MyMap allows users to view their own location, find and navigate to points of interest, and interact with friends in their immediate vicinity. The application focuses on rich user interface and graphic display, showing users location and retrieved information over detailed color maps and aerial photos.

HP (NYSE:HPQ) announced two new HP Designjet multifunction printing systems created to increase productivity while delivering top-quality results. Designed for technical, mapping, and graphics professionals alike.

MultiGen-Paradigm, Inc. announced that Vega Prime v1.2 is now available and shipping to customers. Vega Prime is an extendible, cross-platform, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) C++ development environment that includes MultiGen-Paradigm's advanced low-level scene graph VSG (Vega Scene Graph), as well as a high level abstraction API and many other features for different types of simulation.

Starting July 2, 2003 ISC will release an enhanced SaskGIS Cadastral data set. The new product, which will be their standard cadastral product, has more information and has been designed to be simpler to use.

Letters from Readers

(in response to a letter posted last week on GISWeekly)

Dear David,

The only people who have mapped Afghanistan recently have been the Russians, we have everything they produced. I am surprised Susan did not mention us. See the following links in this regard.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Good luck to your son and have him contact us directly if he needs something more.

All the best,
Earl Elster
Director of Sales and Marketing
East View Cartographic
3020 Harbor Lane North
Minneapolis, MN 55447-5137
Tel. 1 (763) 550-0961 Ext. 270
Fax. 1 (763) 559-2931
Email Contact
www.cartographic.com

Around the Web

New Frontiers: The Geography of Change by AMO Wired, Issue 11.06 June 2003

The world's population booms and busts every 60 minutes. Here's a look at the net population change per hour - from migrations, births, and deaths - for the fastest-growing and fastest-declining cities.

Has Technology Lost Its 'Special' Status? By Steve Lohr, NY Times, May 16, 2003

Shares of many technology companies have rebounded this year, but some wonder if the industry is still a growth industry.

Iraq Foe Print, Voice, Eye Info Indexed , May 12, 2003 CNN.com U.S. interrogators in Iraq are building a digital catalog of prisoners of war and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, scanning and saving their fingerprints and other body characteristics in databases.

Going on in May

2003 Online Water Management Symposium
Date: May 5 - 6, 2003
Place: USA
Attendees can interact with some of the foremost experts in water systems management via the internet.

GeoAlberta 2003
Date: May 7 - 9, 2003
Place: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
GeoAlberta is the premier geomatics conference in Alberta, this year taking place at the TELUS Convention Centre in Calgary. You will have an opportunity to join over 500 professionals in three days of workshops, educational sessions, exhibits from state-of-the-art product and service providers, and engage in networking opportunities.

GIS BRASIL 2003 - 9th GEOTECHNOLOGIES SHOW
Date: May 12 - 16, 2003
Place: Frei Caneca Shopping & Convention Center S©o Paulo City, S©o Paulo State, Brazil
GIS BRASIL is Latin America's largest event geared to the geotechnology market. Every year, since 1994, the companies of this industry and potential users get together to participate in the many activities that take place simultaneously: Conference, courses, the Geotechnology Fair, and the Scientific Talent Show. Specific activities for different audiences such as agriculture, electric power, telecommunications, geomarketing, the environment, city management, and others, are programmed, activities that demonstrate, in practice, how geotechnology accounts for an important competitive advantage in each one of these industries. The activities developed for the Conference are geared mainly to meet users' needs, with a special focus on cases, with the purpose of fostering information exchange. Email Contact

Using Voice-Enabled Wireless and Multimodal Applications to Drive Business Revenues
Date: May 12 - 14, 2003
Place: Chicago, IL USA
Focus on voice-enabled applications that increase employee productivity, operational efficiency and customer service quality for organizations.

Avenza Systems Training
Date: May 15 - 16, 2003
Place: Denver, CO USA
MAPublisher training using MAPublisher 5.0 on Adobe Illustrator 10 on Windows. Given by Avenza technical and training staff.

2003 Bentley International User Conference
Date: May 18 - 22, 2003
Place: Baltimore, MD USA
Bentley's premier annual technology event. Pre-register before Dec. 31, 2002 to be eligible to win a Panasonic portable DVD player. Winner announced January 6, 2003.

GeoSpatial World 2003
Date: May 19 - 21, 2003
Place: New Orleans, LA USA
Sponsored by Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions, GeoSpatial World is the annual international training and management conference of the Intergraph GeoSpatial Users Community. GeoSpatial World 2003 will be held May 19-21, 2003, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Preconference training seminars and the Opening Reception will be held on Sunday, May 18. The conference concludes at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21.

3rd International Conference on GIS - for Earth Science Applications
Date: May 26 - 29, 2003
Place: Ljubljana, Slovenia
The purpose of the conference is to discuss the use of modern computer based methods in geology and related sciences. The conference is focused mostly on the preparation of digital geological and other maps, decision support and prediction systems for spatial planning, (e.g. searching for municipal, chemical and radioactive waste disposal sites, acquisition and analysis of data from satellite imagery).

You can find the full GISCafe.com event calendar here.

To read more news, click here.

-- Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor.